In recent years, there have been structured systems in which electronic apparatuses such as PCs (Personal Computers), television apparatuses, and other AV (Audio/Visual) equipment are interconnected to transmit broadcast signals and various content on a network or the Internet. However, since there are a wide variety of encoding formats of the broadcast signals and the content on the network or the Internet, there are video content, audio content, and Web content encoded in an encoding format incapable of being decoded, depending on electronic apparatuses.
Regarding such problem, the following Patent Document 1 describes a technique in which a terminal apparatus preliminarily notifies a server apparatus of information indicating formats and bit rates that can be decoded by the terminal apparatus, and the server apparatus converts formats and bit rates in accordance with the information to transmit content to a client apparatus.
Further, the following Patent Document 2 also describes a technique in which a video reproducing apparatus transmits attribute information regarding its own data reproducing ability or storage capacity to a video transmitting apparatus, and the video transmitting apparatus encodes content based on the attribute information to transmit the content to a client apparatus.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 9-284567 (paragraphs (0040) to (0046), etc.)    Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-358799 (paragraph (0006), etc.)    Patent Document 3: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-57714    Patent Document 4: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-19948